In today's highly competitive telecommunications industry, service providers provide customers (subscribers) with a wide variety of voice, data, video, and internet services. Because of the complexity of service provider network systems and network equipment being deployed in the field to provide such services, service providers must utilize highly trained technicians to install and fix problems encountered by subscribers.
Typically, service providers utilize call centers that have trained personnel to answer calls from subscribers, to perform the analysis of the problem and to provide a proposed solution. More technical issues are typically referred to tier 2 and tier 3 technicians. Due to the complexity of the systems involved, such call centers may receive a very large number of support calls from subscribers or technicians in the field. Typically, the trained personnel answering the calls begin troubleshooting by performing triage in order to determine, for example, whether the reported problem is related to either radio or core network, whether the problem is subscriber specific or systemic to a subset of subscribers, and so on. After performing the triage the trained support personnel usually apply their empirical knowledge to ascertain possible root causes of the reported problems and to assist with resolution of such problems. However, such calls can be costly in terms of time and resources needed to train the personnel answering the calls from subscribers, and in terms of the time and resources utilized by employing such trained personnel. Furthermore, reducing mean time to repair (MTTR) became of paramount importance and anything that can reduce it, leads to greater return on investment (ROI) for customers.
Accordingly, it would be advantageous to provide a more efficient troubleshooting process in various computer networks.